Can Anger at God Be Righteous?
The human experience is a vastly complex from an emotional perspective. Our emotions are shaped, triggered and influenced in a myriad of ways. This presents particular challenges to the Christian seeking to be faithful in their emotional life and in their relationship with God.
The Psalms offer us an invaluable resource when it comes to navigating the emotional storms of life and can powerfully teach us to be faithful before God and authentic in our emotional life.
In the most recent issue of Christianity Today, J. Todd Billings penned a helpful article to aide us in this challenging area of Christian faithfulness.
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Our Wildest Dreams Aren't Half Wild Enough
Frederick Buechner encourages us to reconsider the joy that is meant to permeate the Christian life in this article from Renovare.org
Laughter gets mixed up with all sorts of things in the Bible and in the world too, things like sneering, irony, making fun of, and beating the competition hollow. It also gets mixed up with things like comedians and slipping on banana peels and having the soles of your feet tickled. There are times when you laugh to keep from crying like when the old wino staggers home in a party hat, or even in the midst of crying like when Charlie Chaplin boils his shoe for supper because he’s starving to death. But one hundred percent, bonded, aged-in-the-wood laughter is something else again.
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Why Hospitality is for all Christians
A helpful call to hospitality as a Christian discipline from Rosaria Butterfield. Originally posted on Q Ideas
Radically ordinary hospitality lived out in the family of God gathers daily, prays constantly, and needs no invitation to do so. And those who don’t yet know the Lord are summoned for food and fellowship. Earthly good is shown as good, and the solitary may choose to be alone but need not be chronically lonely.
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Justification and the Teen Identity Crisis
Our friend Kristen Hatton provides gospel counsel for parents of teenagers.
To debunk Satan’s whispering lies convincing them they are not enough, what they need to hear again and again is who Christ says they are. And He says they are more than enough – more than conquerors – His beloved children, to whom all things have been given. Yes, the God of the universe who knit them together in their mothers’ wombs, casts His love upon them and ascribes them with infinite value, calls them His sons and daughters; heirs of His eternal promises.
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When Love Becomes Codependent Enabling
Scott Sauls, pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church Nashville, TN, shares some helpful thoughts on the nature of love.
While none of us wants to run around telling other people what’s wrong with them, it is a mistake to think that never offering critique—especially a humble one—is a loving thing. In fact, sometimes love requires that we stand up and in humble boldness speak hard words to those whom we love.
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The Future of Religion in a "Secular Age"
James K.A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, has penned a thoughtful articulation of how the Church must understand itself in a secular context.
But what might stop people short—what might truly haunt them—will be encounters with religious communities who have punched skylights in our brass heaven. It will be “traditional” Christian communities—drawing on the wells of historic, “incarnate” Christian worship, with its smells and bells in all its Gothic strangeness—who embody a spirituality that carries whiffs of transcendence that will be strange and therefore all the more enticing.
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Becoming a Beautiful Presence in an Angry Culture
A great post from Richard Doster in 'By Faith'
Christian apologetics, of course, requires us to defend the faith in terms of objective truth, but we shouldn’t forget — especially now — that beauty, too, is integral to our faith. Nor should we ignore beauty’s peculiar power.
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